Code of the Woosters has saved the upper class

Wodehouse’s real sin has been to present the English upper classes as much nicer people than they are — George Orwell

Bertie Wooster, the world’s most beloved upper-class twit, turned 100 last week. He and Jeeves made their first appearance in a short story published in the American magazine Saturday Evening Post in September 1915. Bertie and his tribe of feckless, loveable, heroically dense chums have been part of the cultural landscape ever since, apparently invulnerable to changes in taste and society.

But Orwell, as usual, put his finger on something profound about the privileged world imagined by Wodehouse.

Today, the British upper-class remains a source of deep fascination and considerable loathing. Our society seems, in some ways, as class-bound and subservient to wealth as…

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